and she should have seen him coming
by sapphireswimming
Summary: She pushed him away years ago, but he can't leave it there. Even if it means revealing everything to move on.


**Uh, so I guess I lied when I said I wasn't going to write anymore romance, haha? I'm not entirely sure where this is coming from, but here's another late installment in ispacey's Gray Ghost Week. This fic grew out of "After All" but ended up diverging too much to be considered part of the same story so I'm posting it separately even though I suppose it's still filling the "Spring Joy" prompt.**

 **This title is also inspired by Laurence Fox's _So Be Damned_ , because that song still reminds me of Gray Ghost so why not keep a good thing going?  
**

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 **and she should have seen him coming  
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 _~ after it all ~_

August 29, 2015

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He checked with Tucker first, just to make sure his best friend wasn't planning on asking her out again. Even if he hoped to end up in the dating stage himself, the last thing he wanted to do was come in between Tucker and the girl he had a crush on. Again. He'd grown out of being that jerkish, at least.

But Tucker gave him his blessing to ask her out. At least, if you consider "I think this is the dumbest thing you've done since taking on Pariah Dark single handedly, but I'm not going to ask her out, so sure, if you wanna try and have her take you down and then obliterate your ghost, go for it, man" a blessing. Which Danny did.

It took another couple hours of psyching himself up and psyching himself out to decide if it was worth it to go through with the whole thing. That he wasn't about to do something so phenomenally stupid that even Tucker was warning him off of it.

But he knew he had to go through with it. Even if it ended badly. Even if it ended so badly that he had to look over his shoulder for the rest of his life, he at least had to try to set things right between them. Explain everything. Clear his conscience. And hope that by some miracle, she wouldn't kill him when he was done baring his soul to her.

So Danny went to go see Valerie.

She was surprised when he showed up on her doorstep, but let him in anyway. Which was good, because he wasn't sure how he'd be able to continue if she'd decided to shut him down before he'd even had a chance to start. This was the kind of thing he needed to just start saying and be able to plow through without interruptions.

Preferably none at all, but he'd made up his mind to consider the conversation a win so long as there weren't any interruptions with guns, morning stars, or ectoplasmic nets.

She offered him a seat on the couch which he took gratefully.

And then, before he had any time to chicken out, he'd taken a deep breath and explained that he was already involved in ghost hunting. Partly because of his parents but also through his own side ventures. That he hunted ghosts too. And that he was perfectly able to take care of himself and was good enough that he could even hold his own against her if it came down to it. That he already had, in fact.

And he was sorry but there was something he should have told her a long time ago and he knew that she had every right to hate him for it and punch him and if she never wanted to see him again that would be okay but he couldn't lie to her anymore.

So he took the plunge.

He wasn't sure what to expect, how she would react, and he'd tried to prepare himself for anything.

He was ready for a right hook. Or a karate combination that took him down before he'd even had a chance to go ghost.

The hot tears that spilled down her face after he'd shaken himself back to normality at the end of his confession, while undesirable, had also been somewhat expected. But not her grabbing him by the collar and yanking him forward, pulling him close with eyes squeezed shut.

He was shocked to see that she was fighting to smile through the tears.

"You… doofus," she finally managed to say, pulling them even closer until their foreheads touched.

"Wha-what?" Danny asked, completely bewildered.

"Just shut up," she whispered.

He tried to twist around to get a better look at her face, still not sure what was happening.

But Valerie held him right where he was and looked up, stopping his question before it could begin. "Shut up and kiss me."

Danny blinked. Then realized she was serious. "Oh," he said, "Oka—mmph!"

He wasn't expecting her to become impatient enough to kiss him first, but after his initial surprise, he closed his eyes and melted into it, indulging in their first kiss in far too long.

It was different than he remembered. Her lips softer. But pressing into him with a solid insistence that had never been there the first time they'd tried the whole dating thing. Then again, it seemed like a lifetime ago and they had both changed so much. Learned so much. Suffered at each other's hands. And somehow, despite it all, come back together here in this kiss.

He didn't quite understand it. But he'd wanted it for so long, hoped even when he was sure he'd ruined his chances forever, that he wasn't going to argue when things somehow went right in his life.

Valerie finally pulled away and laid her forehead on his chest.

"This explains so much," she murmured.

"It does?" Danny asked, and she felt the question more than heard it.

She nodded, bunching up the fabric of his shirt as she did. "Everything with Mr. Masters. Dani. Why I could never track Phantom… you down." She stumbled over the correction for just a moment.

Then the wheels began turning in her head as she reviewed years of memories, rewriting them to fit with the revelations Danny had made.

He was surprised when she snorted, but then she added with a grin, "Why you were always running to the bathroom…"

He couldn't help the laughter that bubbled up from the still turbulent coil in the pit of his stomach. "Hey, yeah. That wasn't my best excuse," he admitted. "But it worked." His brow furrowed. "Kinda."

"Everyone thought you had a bladder disease," Valerie smiled.

"Better than the truth," Danny replied, and suddenly it got quiet.

He shifted awkwardly in the silence, desperately hoping that he hadn't undone the miracle of Valerie not trying to kill him.

"I… I'm really sorry for not telling you before. I… I should have. I was scared but it was wrong to put you through everything that happened knowing what I did and leaving you in the dark. And…" his words began to jumble up as he tried to make his apologies, so little, so late, but heartfelt all the same.

Valerie clenched her hands in his shirt, shaking her head so that he would stop rambling. "I think," she said when he finally stopped stumbling over his apology, "I think that it was good you didn't tell me."

Danny pulled away from her in surprise.

She smiled ruefully until the expression twisted into a grimace. "I was… obsessed. And not in a good way. I was in a bad place, Danny, back in high school," she explained, eyes straight ahead on the fabric of his shirt. "I mean, you know that, but… I wouldn't have… reacted well… if you'd actually said something to me then."

Danny started to laugh, brushing it off, but Valerie shook her head again. "No, I know I'd want to think that I was a better person than that. That I would have stopped and thought it through and understood that you'd always been Danny Fenton even if you were Danny Phantom too. And that you weren't evil. And that sometimes bad things happen and it's not really anybody's fault. Or," she said, "at least that they don't deserve to get shot over it even if it is…"

"You didn't know, Valerie," Danny stressed, breaking into her speech. "You were doing the best you could with the information you had. I don't blame you at all for thinking Phantom was the bad guy. I would have if I'd been in your shoes."

She sighed heavily, bitterness creeping into the edges of her voice. "But that doesn't change the fact that I probably would have shot you if you'd tried to tell me back then."

Danny shrugged awkwardly. Because it was hard to deny that Valerie probably would have shot him if he'd revealed himself in those early days. "Well. That's… probably what made you such a good hunter so early," he said.

Before Valerie could argue that away as a bad thing, Danny said, "I kinda think that was the only reason I survived…"

Valerie looked up at him in surprise. "That doesn't make any sense."

"No, well, I mean," he tried to explain what he wanted to say. "I couldn't have done it all by myself," he admitted. "Protect Amity, I mean. There were a lot of ghosts coming through. A lot. But you weren't _always_ shooting at me," he said with a smile.

"The only time I wasn't shooting at you was when I couldn't find you," she grumbled.

"Fair enough," he laughed.

She scowled at him. "It's not fair…" she protested.

"No," he agreed. "It wasn't. But. We're all good now, right?" he asked tentatively. Hopefully.

She looked at him for a long time and then smiled softly. "Yeah. Yeah, we are."

"I have to say," Danny said, hoping he wasn't about to jinx anything. "You're taking this, um, a lot better than I thought you would."

Valerie snorted.

"I've grown up," she said. "And I've figured out a lot on my own. I think," she said, eyes fluttering away from his, "that part of me knew. I don't know how long, but. Hearing you say everything… I wasn't really surprised." She looked him with a piercing look. "I think my days of shooting you are over, though."

"You don't even want a punch?" he asked, only half joking.

Her face split into a grin, but she shook her head. "You know what? I'm not even going to take a rain check. I figure after everything that's happened we're about even." She twisted her fingertips in the hem of his shirt, wiggling them into the belt loops of his jeans and nodded firmly. "We're good," she said.

The relief spread across his face, banishing the lingering worry that even if this had all been hashed out, they'd ruined any real chance they had to be together. Somehow, _somehow_ , this was real. He was holding her in his arms, wrapping his hands around her back and drawing her flush against him.

He could feel the heat of her skin where his thumb brushed against her and she was staring up at him with an expression that took his breath away.

Part of him wanted to stay this way forever, to watch, enthralled, as his heart leapt with the realization that this was going to work out. That he could call her his girlfriend now and soon, they'd be official. For real, this time. And to stay.

Danny opened his mouth to say something, then stopped. "Good," he finally settled on as he haltingly leaned down toward her.

She smiled and dispelled any final doubts by rising up on her toes and pulling him down into another long kiss.

The first of many, many to come.

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 **If anyone else wanted to join me in doing this event (months after the fact, aha), the prompts were: spring joy, fantasy/lore AU, role reversal AU, college AU, crossover, Hunger Games AU, and dark vs. light.**


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